I know, I watched the race. Mid 20s wouldn't have been much better. He has a month to figure it out before the next World Cup. It is possible that he's having an end of CX lull so a solid block of XC training could get his form loaded again.

EDIT: He at least needs to beat the other Neders (he might have without the flat I suppose).

jmdirt wrote:I wish that he would have stuck it out a bit longer! It aint as easy as it looks though huh?

I do feel there's a bit of schadenfreude here. Lots of people think XC is just for roadies in the winter. It felt like VdP thought he would just be able to switch across and hang with the big boys and that proved not to be true. In fact he was made to look extremely ordinary.

I think lots of people don't quite realise how tough XC riding is. They think the technical bits are easy and that the riders aren't really that fit compared to road riders. In reality the technical bits are really, really technical. Watching video and looking at photos of some of those WC tracks I know people who would want a 160mm FS enduro bike before they would even consider riding them. The fact that guys like Albason and Schurter and zipping down on 70 odd degree head angle, short travel bikes is insane. They're doing it when their heart-rate is up at 90 odd % of maximum too! A recent video of Marc Beaumont (current UCI DH racer) against Nino Schurter showed just how fast these guys are. Shurter was faster on the downhill and much, much faster on the uphill.

The fitness is completely different too. It's sprint/climb, descend, sprint/climb, descend. There is no let up, no pushing big numbers for a few minutes to an hour in a break, it's extremely explosive and I think people get a shock when they actually experience it.

I think the same is going to happen with Sagan if I'm honest. He's put even less into it than VdP, his training suits the riding less and he's not even bothered racing much. I will be extremely surprised if he's anywhere near the podium in the Olympics.

jmdirt wrote:I wish that he would have stuck it out a bit longer! It aint as easy as it looks though huh?

I do feel there's a bit of schadenfreude here. Lots of people think XC is just for roadies in the winter. It felt like VdP thought he would just be able to switch across and hang with the big boys and that proved not to be true. In fact he was made to look extremely ordinary.

I think lots of people don't quite realise how tough XC riding is. They think the technical bits are easy and that the riders aren't really that fit compared to road riders. In reality the technical bits are really, really technical. Watching video and looking at photos of some of those WC tracks I know people who would want a 160mm FS enduro bike before they would even consider riding them. The fact that guys like Albason and Schurter and zipping down on 70 odd degree head angle, short travel bikes is insane. They're doing it when their heart-rate is up at 90 odd % of maximum too! A recent video of Marc Beaumont (current UCI DH racer) against Nino Schurter showed just how fast these guys are. Shurter was faster on the downhill and much, much faster on the uphill.

The fitness is completely different too. It's sprint/climb, descend, sprint/climb, descend. There is no let up, no pushing big numbers for a few minutes to an hour in a break, it's extremely explosive and I think people get a shock when they actually experience it.

I think the same is going to happen with Sagan if I'm honest. He's put even less into it than VdP, his training suits the riding less and he's not even bothered racing much. I will be extremely surprised if he's anywhere near the podium in the Olympics.

That's why I was surprised that VdP wasn't so good at XC. For sure, XC is much mroe technical, but Cyclocross is also intense with no let up. I though VdP would have been not as fit as Nino but among the top 10 riders, but I guess he wasn't, and not good enough on the downhill.

I think the issue is that XCO is much more technical than CX. It's not just descents that are technical, the climbs are too. That makes a really big difference, it takes real technique to keep speed on a technical climb. One mistake and you can lose 10-30 seconds easily. Add into it the skills required for descending which is much harder these days and it's a very different ball game. The days of dirt roadies in the pros are gone. It might still exist on the local scene but not at the top.